Anthem's Fall Page 9

  A deep alarm began to drone, echoing off the walls and the high ceiling, and a series of thunderous booms resonated from just beyond the palace. The walls shuddered and weighty decorations fell to the floor. Panicked shouts were heard in the corridors surrounding War Hall.

  Councillor Harken’s face turned pale. “The Felixes.”

  “Is the army assembled?” Emperor Faris called over the clamor to General Portid.

  “The entire Imperial First Class is assembled and ready to fight,” there was not a trace of fear in General Portid’s worn features. “Permission to lead them, my lord?”

  “Go!” Emperor Faris ordered as a dozen mammoth Royal Guards stormed into the hall to protect him.

  “My lord,” Councillor Harken shouted over the rising calamity and raised a forearm against falling debris from the lofty ceiling. “You must call for the Prince! There is too much at stake here to risk the absence of Vengelis!”

  “Yes!” General Barlow called. “Prince Vengelis must be summoned at once.”

  Emperor Faris’s mouth moved to speak, but no words came. He rubbed his aged hands together. The calluses of his palms were dry and worn from long years of use. A poignant expression claimed his features, as he suddenly realized his time had passed. His men were looking to another to protect them. He nodded in heart-rending agreement and turned to a member of the Royal Guard. “Send word to my son. Inform Prince Vengelis to return to Sejeroreich immediately. His people need him.”

  The soldier nodded solemnly and sprinted out of the hall as a closer rumble rattled the ceiling far above. Emperor Faris considered the faces of the War Council. Aside from the stoic members of his Royal Guard, every one looked shaken. The alarms continued to roar as a massive quake shook from beneath the emperor’s feet. He craned his head and looked up to the faces of his ancestors. They stared down with their aloof stone gaze, as they had for two thousand years. For two millennia the children of those stone faces had known no fear. Yet now fear rose, unfamiliar and sickly, in the back of the emperor’s throat.

  “If you aren’t a warrior, leave the palace at once! Sejeroreich is to be evacuated,” Emperor Faris Epsilon shouted, pulling his gaze from his great forefathers. “If you are a warrior, follow me!”

  Chapter Six

  Vengelis

  In the highest latitudinal reaches of Anthem, not far from the northernmost pole, Prince Vengelis Epsilon stood up to his knees in the snow of Mount Karlsbad. A cold wind was blowing the dusty snow into his dark hair and darker eyes. Vengelis Epsilon was short for a Primus, standing a shade over six feet. Like his father and most children of the Royal bloodlines, Vengelis lacked the unnaturally tall and bulky stature of many Imperial First Class soldiers. His frame was more honed and well proportioned than ungainly.

  Heir to the Epsilon throne, Vengelis was undeniably the strongest of his people. From the oldest man to the youngest child, every citizen of the Epsilon empire knew what their prince lacked in size, he made up for in his pure Sejero bloodline and his legendary intensity.

  Far from the hubs of Primus society and crowded streets of Sejeroreich, Mount Karlsbad stood in a vastly secluded region of Anthem’s northern ice world. Rising out of the endless snows and frigid plains, Mount Karlsbad was the lone frozen citadel in the empty North. The absolute desolation and unobstructed environment proved ideal for training, a harsh and stalwart land suitable for the few mad enough to train there.

  It was on the precipitous slopes of Mount Karlsbad that the enigmatic Master Borneo Tolland resided. Vengelis Epsilon had trained with Master Tolland for many years in his teens. Yet still, Vengelis would return to train with his former teacher. In a way Mount Karlsbad was Vengelis’s home. He preferred spending time here with Master Tolland, thousands of miles away from the nearest societal distraction.

  “Focus,” Vengelis whispered into the biting wind, his eyes slowly searching the striking blue sky and the snow desert and winding glaciers far below. There were three out there, but he could not see them. Vengelis had no doubt they were waiting to pounce upon him in unison. Two of the most extraordinary soldiers in Sejeroreich had come north with him to act as his sparring partners. Though strong and stern Imperial First Class soldiers, they would prove little more than practice dummies against Vengelis’s skill. His only real concern was Master Tolland, who would certainly wait for Vengelis to make a mistake before he revealed himself.

  Vengelis knew they would try to attack from different directions.

  A heavy gust off the mountainside churned a snowdrift and blinded him in swirling white. Vengelis closed his eyes at once, freeing himself from the shackles of sight, as Master Tolland had taught him. Vision would be no help to him in this precarious position amid the blinding snow. He would have to feel their approach now.

  Vengelis rolled his shoulders and flexed his arms, veins and cords of muscle rising to the surface of his skin. As he centered his mind, the air around him became palpable. The screaming of the polar winds died in his ears. He focused on ridding his lungs of frigid air and his bare fingers of gnawing subzero cold. Vengelis slipped into readiness, no longer relying on any one sense. He concentrated on the approach of his attackers. Like a coiled snake, Vengelis Epsilon stood at perfect attention—ready to lash out in an instant.

  A faint ripple moved through the now placid world surrounding him. It was Alegant Hoff lumbering toward him from six o’clock, directly behind. Alegant Hoff was the Lord General of the Imperial First Class, third in command only to the Epsilons themselves, Faris and Vengelis respectively. Lord General Hoff was strong, very strong, but his strength came with a critical loss of quickness and discretion. He was underestimating the powers of his prince; Vengelis could sense it in the recklessness of his heavy footfalls.

  Vengelis then felt Krell Darien coming in, head on. If Lord General Hoff was charging at him with a reckless speed, the pace of this young Royal Guard was outright foolish. Darien was a promising member of the Royal Guard, one of the youngest soldiers in history to reach the Royal Guard’s renowned ranks. Vengelis had personally selected Darien to join his training after seeing him devastate several of his peers in duels.

  Hoff and Darien were two of the most powerful soldiers in the Imperial First Class. Both of their behemoth masses shook the world around Vengelis. He tilted his head into the blustering wind, eyes still closed. Where was Master Tolland?

  The monstrous mass of Darien bounded over the ridge just in front of Vengelis, his heavy legs shaking the frozen ground. It was an obvious decoy. Vengelis maintained his focused state, channeling all his concentration on locating the third sparring partner, Master Tolland.

  Wait on the attack; let your opponent commit to the first move and then counter. Perfection in execution will always trump brute strength and impulsiveness. Vengelis could practically hear the sagacious voice of Master Tolland in the wind.

  Then, like the sharp release of a taut bowstring, his muscles surged into action. With blazing reflexes Vengelis reeled around on the spot. Lord General Hoff’s enormous knuckles were mere inches from Vengelis’s unscarred and unworn face. Vengelis dodged the thirty-pound fist with searing speed, protecting his still straight and unbroken nose, a testament to his quickness.

  Vengelis grabbed the huge thrusting forearm and spun, shooting his hips into the giant’s belly and throwing him directly into Darien, who was now mere feet away. The two giants collided with a deafening crack that echoed across the snow-swept plains below like a roll of thunder. Hoff and Darien were momentarily dazed from the impact.

  Vengelis smirked in their direction, his eyes still closed.

  The two Imperial First Class soldiers each shook their heads to purge discombobulating black stars from their vision, and exploded toward the young leader in unison. Vengelis weaved easily between their full-force attacks, still focusing his attention on detecting Master Tolland’s approach. He was toying with Hoff and Darien; their movements were so slow he barely had to concentrate to avoid them.

>   “Enough of this,” Vengelis muttered. He flexed his knees and exploded into the sky with a loud boom as his body ripped a hole through the supersonic barrier. The two lumbering behemoths followed skyward in his wake. And so they took to flight. The three figures soared across the broad sky like great falcons, the very air around their shoulders tearing apart from their speed.

  In a split second Vengelis suddenly reversed directions and launched himself directly at Hoff. Before the Lord General could raise one of his hefty arms to block the blow, Vengelis buried a fist into Hoff’s enormous barrel chest with vicious force. The blow audibly deflated the wind out of the general, and left him gasping for breath as he plummeted helplessly to the snowdrifts far below.

  Vengelis turned and dodged Darien’s incoming blow with staggering agility and countered the Royal Guard’s strike by sending a knee straight to his stomach.

  “Gah!” Vengelis roared. A surprise impact sunk into his back, striking his left kidney with surgical precision. Master Tolland had entered the fray. Like Vengelis, Master Tolland was of Royal descent, his body lean and hard as steel. Vengelis turned just in time to duck away from a potentially crushing blow to his chin.

  “You’re getting sloppy, Vengelis!” Master Tolland roared over the wind and burst forward. “Too many nights in Sejeroreich!”

  Vengelis smiled and engaged him. The flurry of attacks that ensued between them was without restraint. The two warriors battled brutally, the speed of the strikes accelerating with each passing moment. From below, the two beaten giants Hoff and Darien heaved for breath as around their thick legs snow melted.

  “Mother of god,” Darien muttered, his hands resting on his knees, strikes echoing across the barren lands from overhead.

  Hoff blinked as he tried futilely to track the movement of the two Royal warriors—old and young— across the sky.

  “Vengelis . . . crazy.” The Lord General panted.

  Darien nodded. “Master Tolland, too.”

  There would be no draw. Even in a training session such as this, it would not stop until blood was drawn or someone submitted. That was the way of the Sejero warriors of old, and that was the way of Prince Vengelis Epsilon. Every spar he entered ended in blood, and every duel he fought would end in his death before his submission. To Sejero warriors, fighting was not a sport. It was life. Or it was death. In a world where the very cohesion of society depended upon the raw power of the greatest few, those few regarded that power with the utmost solemnity.

  Vengelis had been able to best the aging Master Tolland for many years now, but he still believed the man had more to teach him. For Vengelis, unlike many of the Sejero soldiers of the day, there was no laid-back, contented posttraining stage in life—no juncture at which a warrior could proclaim aptitude and rely upon the tutelage of a former education. Refinements could always be made. New techniques could always be discovered. The day a warrior stopped bettering himself through ferocious and disciplined training was the day he witnessed his own defeat. There was no room for the soft among the strong. As a young teenager, Vengelis and his compassionless fists had proved this to many former champions before their swaggering challenges stopped coming.

  Now in the prime of his fighting life at twenty-one years old, Vengelis had not been challenged in years.

  Despite his celebrity and prestige, Vengelis liked returning to the harshness of Mount Karlsbad for days or weeks at a time to spar with the only worthy partner on Anthem: the eccentric and mysterious Master Tolland. Vengelis had traveled north with Lord General Hoff and Darien three days previous. As always, he had issued strict orders to the Imperial Army not to interrupt their stay. Vengelis Epsilon’s orders were always followed.

  “I think you’re losing your touch, old man,” Vengelis said as he locked arms with Master Tolland.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Master Tolland murmured. Now over sixty years old, Master Tolland was only a shadow of his former physical self. Nevertheless, he could always provide a challenge for Vengelis—an accomplishment few could claim. Even as Vengelis taunted, Master Tolland nearly caught him in a leg lock. Vengelis rolled out of it, defending the ligaments of his knee with practiced grace.

  “You leave your legs open for submission too oft—” Master Tolland sunk below a furious high kick. “Good!”

  Vengelis smirked. “And to think, you would have me hide my power.”

  “Of course I would not have you hide it. I would have you appreciate the nature of your Sejero gifts.”

  “You think I don’t appreciate my power?” Vengelis shouted, burying a fist into Master Tolland’s raised forearms. The deafening sound of knuckle against arm echoed for miles in every direction.

  “I would have you appreciate the”—Master Tolland dodged another blow— “Effects and ramifications of your actions.”

  “When will you ever give up on lecturing me? You and your conservative perspectives on Sejero strength. I’ll never understand your stale theories on leadership and morality. You know, some of my generals in Sejeroreich say you lack the courage to embrace Sejero power. They say you’re frail, though never in my hearing range.”

  “And tell me, have any one of these ruthless and sedentary generals ever left the warmth of their palace to issue me a formal challenge?”

  Vengelis smirked. “They may be sedentary, but they’re not stupid.”

  “A sense of relativism is not weakness, Vengelis. It is strength. It takes courage to consider all ends, and not simply believe in what you choose or what you’re taught.”

  “I’m a realist,” Vengelis grunted, trying to catch Master Tolland in an arm bar. “I place my convictions in power, and power alone. All other beliefs are conditional upon the might to see them through. Those without the strength of fist have no right to word of voice.”

  “You’re not cruel, Vengelis,” Master Tolland panted. “In no way overtly sadistic or tyrannical like many of your forefathers. But one day I hope you are able to rise above the politicians and sycophants of Sejeroreich. You could be so much more.”

  In the midst of their titanic spar across the sky, both master and former student suddenly pulled away from one another and looked into the distant horizon. Still far away, someone was approaching from the south.

  “Were you supposed to be somewhere today?” Master Tolland asked through heaving breaths, his hands on his hips in exhaustion.

  “No,” Vengelis said, squinting into the horizon and breathing steadily. “Are you expecting anyone?”

  “What do you think?” Master Tolland asked.

  Vengelis laughed. In all his time spent on Mount Karlsbad, he had never seen Master Tolland host a guest aside from himself.

  “Whoever it is, they’re certainly an Imperial First Class, and moving at top speed.”

  Vengelis nodded. “If it’s someone looking to become a student of yours, I’ll certainly provide them with a lesson.”

  “I don’t think it is.” Master Tolland glared uncertainly at the tiny figure in the horizon.

  Hoff and Darien, seeing the spar had stopped, ascended to them as Vengelis and Master Tolland hovered freely a few thousand feet over the desolate glaciers and snow plains.

  “This is something new. A draw?” Hoff called. He was hunched over slightly, still shaken from the punch he took from Vengelis.

  “Someone is coming from the south.” As the words left Master Tolland, the tiny black dot grew larger in the cloudless sky.

  They all simultaneously began to move in the direction of the dot. As the four great warriors drew closer, they saw the visitor was indeed an Imperial First Class soldier. Like Darien, he was armored in the raiment of a Royal Guard. The messenger came to a stop before them and wheezed violently, appearing on the verge of losing consciousness from his maximum speed flight.

  “Here is someone who has made a large mistake in judgment,” Vengelis said. “I gave explicit orders not to be disturbed.”

  “M-my lord Vengelis.” The man gasped for brea
th. “Your father Emperor Faris calls for your immediate return to Sejeroreich! The capital is under attack. Anthem is under attack!”

  Vengelis’s face constricted, his lips thinning. “Explain yourself.”

  The messenger coughed repeatedly and threw up his arms in exasperation. “We aren’t entirely sure. From what I understand, powerful machines have demolished Municera and the Twin Cities. My lord, millions have been killed. The machines are in Sejeroreich now. It is open war.”

  Vengelis’s eyes narrowed. “Machines?”

  “Yes, my lord. Machines.”

  “What the hell has the army been doing?”

  “The Imperial First Class has risen in Sejeroreich’s defense. The battle is underway as we speak, my lord.”

  “We must go at once,” Master Tolland spoke calmly and looked to the south. “Our path will take us past Municera and the Twin Cities. Perhaps we will be able to learn something about this attack on the—”

  Vengelis exploded southward, splintering through the frigid sky and accelerating out of sight into the blue almost instantly. Master Tolland was immediately after him. Hoff and Darien looked speechlessly from the southern horizon to the winded messenger.

  “If this is some sort of trick, it will cost you your life,” Hoff said.

  “I wish it were, Lord General Hoff. I wish it were.”

  Both giants hurried in the trail of the two great warriors, leaving the exhausted messenger alone.

  Vengelis roared southward, countless miles falling away beneath the deafening sound of his speed. The featureless plains of northern snow soon gave way to vast frozen tundra and thick boreal forest as he flew ever south. Here and there, broad striations and wide craters dug deep into the very curvature of the planet: enduring scars from the uncivilized weapons of the ancient struggle against the Zergos that led to the rise of the Sejero. Confusion claimed him as he exploded across his pocked and marred land.